Started touring up USA bowl around 1130 on wind and sun affected snow, and there wasn’t much of it, things are looking pretty bare on south faces in Big Cottonwood. We wanted to check out how things were looking on a N facing slope and dug a pit at 9900 ft, 34° NE. If you’re looking at a Wasatch backcountry map it’s the spot between South Monitor and Katie’s Run. Found the same poor snowpack structure as has been the norm this season. Decomposing and faceted snow make up the bottom 60cm of the snowpack. Extended Column test saw ECTP12 down 80cm on faceted snow. Two solid slabs popped out when propagation occurred. This problem looks to get worse before it gets better. For the remainder of our tour we didn’t notice any significant signs of instability as we traveled on primarily S faces and had to deal more with low snow and obstacles than avalanche hazard. A few good pockets of snow in low angle, protected spots are still there.

A little bit of graupel followed by big fluffy flakes while we were digging out pit. Wind kicked in around 1330 coming out of the W-SW. No significant accumulation during our tour.

See video below for Extended Column Test results.